Question about cloth and the pro game.
- Thread starter mnorwood
- Start date
Simonis showed up in my area, Okla., in the mid 80's. Before that we all played on the old slower woolens like Mali/Stevens.
But even when the cloth went to Simonis for pro tourneys, the tables were often still slower. See the 1989 Brunswick World Open on ESPN. You will hear Earl and Grady mention that the table is playing slow.
In my area in western mass, very few pool halls had Simonis when I was going to college in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The local pool hall put in Simonis when they got new ownership. First time I had a multipack was the first day I played on them, and I can say without a doubt that the faster cloth made the game so much easier. Size of the pocket had nothing to do with how much easier they played.
Last edited:
Personally have experienced that the brand of table being played seems to have more impact on overall table speed than whatever cloth is installed. As an example - play on an Olhausen and a Diamond with exactly the same Simonis - the Diamond plays much faster.
Select table rubber , maybe rail height, Not sure on all the contributing factors, but I recently played on an old Gandy that had new cushions installed with Andy 600 cloth and the cue ball is almost impossible to control due to speed Off the rails, not the cloth itself.
My favorite set up will always be a GC with original rails/ rubber/ pockets and Simonis 860.
Select table rubber , maybe rail height, Not sure on all the contributing factors, but I recently played on an old Gandy that had new cushions installed with Andy 600 cloth and the cue ball is almost impossible to control due to speed Off the rails, not the cloth itself.
My favorite set up will always be a GC with original rails/ rubber/ pockets and Simonis 860.
Last edited:
Twas about 50/50 in the rooms around me when I became aware.
Early 1990s.
Early 1990s.
You need to watch this video starting at about 7:45. 760 was too fast for tournament conditions and the tour changed to a new cloth -- 860. I had 760 installed on my home table in 1991 and the speed was fine in those conditions (in a basement).
The stimp meter Greg describes in the video can measure relative speeds of cloth, but it requires calibration if you want to have an absolute measurement.
It is possible to figure out how fast cloth is in absolute terms by timing a lag shot. If you have a video of such a shot -- which might be a long roll for position and not an actual lag -- you can put the rolling time and length of roll into a simple formula and get a number for the speed of the cloth.
Typical cloth used to be a speed of about 70, meaning that the slowing due to the cloth was the equivalent of the ball rolling up a slope of 1 in 70 or 1.4 %. Tournament cloth now I think is more like a speed of 100 or 110 so the ball is going to roll about 40% farther after the last cushion for the same speed of the ball.
Last edited:
everyone i know hated 760. It was like playing on glass. We were used to actually stroking the cb on the older stuff, on 760 all you had to do was tap it around. May have been ok for 14.1 but for 9b it sucked, still does imo. High humidity may slow it some but Tulsa is pretty sticky and 760 was always too fast for me.
I helped put Simonis on the Frat house table in 1973.
{{I do not remember which Simonis}}
{{I do not remember which Simonis}}
I still prefer 760, since (IMO) the rate of speed change as it wears is less. 860 is fine when new, but old & wet, it is too slow for 14.1 even. Many rooms now have 860HR, which seems to get more loose when it’s humid. Once 760 is broken in, it stays more consistent over it’s life, and is less effected by environmental conditions.
Check out the Greg Sullivan video posted above. At one point, the pro tour was getting $3 per yard of 860 sold for their endorsement.
The 'rate of speed change is less'. How would one quantify that? I mean there's really no way to measure that. Since it starts out so fast of course it will be faster further into its lifespan than the others. I'd bet the 'rate' of change is pretty much the same for all three Simonis pool blends.